


A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea

by Dorinda



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Gay Character, Feelings Realization, First Time, M/M, Matchmaking, Misunderstandings, Party, Sharing a Bed, everything is very fancy oh my
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21647041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: In the heart of the enemy’s country, Jack is guest of honour at an elegant night in the grand home of Adhémar de La Mothe. La Mothe is a strange and marvelous host, and he certainly seems very fond of Stephen...Could it all just be cover for one of Stephen’s secret missions? Or is there some deeper truth to be revealed?
Relationships: Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin
Comments: 45
Kudos: 159





	A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Perfect Duet](https://perfect-duet.dreamwidth.org/) Dreamwidth community, for their 2019 Advent Challenge.

"There is nothing," said Jack Aubrey into the underside of a cracked bilge pump fitting, "worse than Gibraltar in the summertime."

No one heard him but for the pump, and perhaps some of the rats scratching in the shadows of the hold. He supposed that was only appropriate.

Poor _Surprise_ , stuck in harbour while she waited for Jack's superiors to make up their minds about her next mission. And poor Jack, stuck there with her, his face in a makeshift pump apparatus gone bad—with no permission for a proper refit, he and his scant crew were reduced to hasty patches and fixes, and Jack himself, for lack of any better person, crawling round in the muck of the hold.

Greased with sweat and nameless, stinking harbour ooze, Jack was disgusting and disgusted, with _Surprise_ as well as himself—it wasn't her fault, but he was hot and cross and had seldom felt less like a captain at all.

"Might as well dig ditches," he muttered, then raised his voice to a bellow for the carpenter's mate to bring a new fitting on the double.

* * *

Jack at last extracted himself from the depths and slogged toward the cabin. His shirt stuck to his sides, something damp had trickled down the back of his neck, yet no clean sea anywhere for a swim. He glowered at the other ships all round him, boiling alike in the Gibraltar sun, fouling his ocean. 

"Filthy buggers," he said, turning away from the rail, right into the face of a weedy midshipman.

"Sir?" 

No longer the luxury of only being heard by the bilge and the rats, then. Jack fixed him with a stern eye, brazening it out. 

"Mr. Carmichael," he said. He noticed how clean the boy's white duck trousers were. "Should you find difficulty in keeping yourself occupied, I might offer a few suggestions."

"Yes sir. I mean no sir! I mean—when Mr. Lamb has finished with the new oarlock, we're taking the launch to bring in the water casks, sir."

Even the energy for being pompous and unreasonable suddenly deserted Jack. He waited a few seconds, while the midshipman gulped in suspense. It built character. Then: "Carry on," he said, and continued his slog.

The cabin was at least out of the sun, if not much cooler. Stephen sat at the table, inky to the elbows, writing another letter. Jack felt better at once. 

"Damn Gib anyhow." Jack clawed his shirt over his head, then shucked his working trousers and kicked them into a heap with his shoes and stockings. 

"Indeed," said Stephen absently. His pen scratched along.

"Damn the Admiralty," said Jack, warming to his theme. He ducked into the quarter-gallery and poured water on himself from the jug, calling through the door, "And damn the British Navy!"

He returned, naked, wet, rubbing his face hard with a towel. It sounded as if Stephen's pen skipped and stopped. But when he had hastily dried his hair and emerged from the towel's folds, Stephen's head was bent over his page; he wrote another line, scritch-scratch, for all the world like the rats in the hold. "I mean it, Stephen."

Stephen looked up at him. His face was rather wan lately, despite the summer and its punishing sun. "You relieve my mind," he said. "I was in some doubt. You have only said so perhaps three dozen times since breakfast." 

Jack approached the table, swiping the towel down his chest. "What is all this, anyhow?" he asked. "You've been writing yourself into a fever lately. Could there be some new discovery to draw up? A Gibraltar Swimming Cockroach?"

Stephen turned his top sheet over face-down and eyed him severely. "You will drip upon my ink, Jack Aubrey, and it already so slow to dry in this eternal miasma."

Jack dried his loins and between his legs, and leaned on Stephen's chair, grinning down at him. "Now who's—" he began.

A tap at the door and Killick's disagreeable face poked in. "Which a boat's heading this way, your Honour," he said. 

Jack sighed and flung the towel haphazardly toward his heap of clothes. "Very well," he said, "I'll come." Killick scooped the clothes up and vanished, muttering ominously.

"If it ain't my orders for someplace far from here..." Jack said, but didn't finish. He rummaged through his sea chest and dressed in his second-best uniform, just in case.

* * *

No orders, but at least a puny sack of mail. He handed most of it to his officers to sort and distribute to their divisions, and brought a small oilcloth parcel back in to the cabin with him. The wax seal was already soft from having lain in the sun and he broke it open with ease.

The first item out was a long, creamy envelope, addressed in an elegant hand. Jack whistled. "I say, Stephen! Another one of these for you!" He laid it on the table, where it practically gleamed. "Ain't it pretty, though! And in French. Those curlicues, upon my word!" He laughed, nudged it with a finger. "Sure you don't have anything you want to tell me, hey?"

He regretted it the moment he said it. Stephen's eyes gave nothing away—they so seldom did—but his face, drawn and still, was its own reproach. 

Jack swallowed. "Oh. I do beg your pardon." 

"Not at all," Stephen replied. He drew the beautiful letter toward him and folded his hands upon it. Jack felt this was at least partly to cover the writing from Jack's own cursed inquisitiveness, and he felt quite the scrub.

After all, what business was it of his who wrote to Stephen? Even if it was in French, and decorated like billy-be-damned, with a fine heavy ink and a hand like an artist? Stephen had a whole side to his life that he only shared with Jack in pieces, and only when forced. It was secret for the good of the country, nothing to be bruited about by mere mortals. What right had Jack to resent it?

And yet...and yet.

He thrust his hand into the oilcloth packet. A second thick white envelope, elaborately decorated and finely written. "Looks like another for you," Jack said lightly—none of his affair—and he set it down on the table. The sun from the window struck it and the handwriting shone:

JOHN AUBREY  
CAPTAIN  
OF HIS BRITTANIC MAJESTY'S ROYAL NAVY  
UPON THE SHIP SURPRISE 

He stared.

"It appears to be for you," Stephen said neutrally. He opened his envelope and disappeared into his own letter, leaving Jack alone with the thing.

Jack eyed it, opened it, withdrew a thick, crackling inner sheet, and read it. Slowly. Three times through. 

"Good god," he said. "Stephen."

"Hmm."

" _Stephen_."

Stephen looked up at last, and Jack pressed the letter into his hands. 

"Do you need a translation?" Stephen said, his fingers deftly straightening the crumpled paper as if by reflex.

"It's in English," said Jack. "I think. Be a good fellow, do, and tell me if it says what I think it says?"

Stephen took scarcely a moment to read it. "It says you have been invited to address the _Institut de France_ , in Paris. I cannot for all love grasp the nature of the topic, but it seems to be related to one of your navigational-mathematical-astronomical—" he waved his hands as if at a cloud of midges— "—one of the papers so well-received by the Royal Society."

"In _Paris_ ," Jack said, the way another man might have said "on the surface of the Moon".

"Yes."

"Next _week_."

"Yes," said Stephen. "Felicitations."

Jack's mouth opened, paused, and shut again. Then he upended the oilcloth wrapper over the table, and two official travel passes fell out, written and signed and countersigned and stamped. Heavy wax seals sat side by side, the Imperial Eagle, the Royal Lion and Unicorn, French and British for once in perfect amity.

 _Two_ passes. 

"Is this— Do they—" Jack stopped himself, chose his words more carefully. "Shall you come with me, then, Stephen?"

Stephen picked up one of the travel passes; he turned it over and over, his fingertips delicately poised on the corners so as to leave no smudges. Then he said, "I would be most pleased, my dear."

* * *

Jack, waiting in his seat for his name to be called—in his seat, in the _Institut_ , in _Paris_ , in _France_ , not a prison cell nor a 24-pound cannonball to be seen—felt Stephen touch his arm.

"Jack," Stephen muttered into his ear. "I am sorry to be so late with the mention. But you are invited to a party of sorts, after your paper. A little supper, music. Dancing, I suppose."

He turned. Stephen looked as subdued and as strained as he had during the whole journey, sailing up the coast under a flag of truce and driven by official hired coachmen all the way inland. Jack had no idea whether Stephen meant him to say no or aye. "Is it permitted?"

"It is not forbidden," Stephen said. He swallowed. "And I am begged to say that you would be doing the company a very great honour."

Stephen must have some other mission, of course; surely this was to get Jack out of his way. Jack's nerves, already tuned to a high pitch, twanged like a broken E string. "Very well," he said shortly, as if discussing battle instructions. "Tell me where to go and how long to stay."

But Stephen said only, "I will take you there. It is at the home of a friend, Monsieur de La Mothe. He says he begs you will forgive the informality of this invitation, and looks forward extremely to making your acquaintance."

"Oh!" Jack smiled, relenting. "If he's a friend of yours, Stephen, then of course I shall go."

Stephen looked as if he would speak further, but then Jack's name was called (to a surprising sound of applause) and Jack's feet were carrying him to the front of the room and onto the rostrum. His neckcloth felt rather tight, his heavy silk-velvet coat likewise; he was grateful that Killick had forcibly buttoned and tied him into the very finest clothes the entire Gibraltar squadron had to offer, even if some of the garments belonged to men not quite his equal across the shoulders.

The great room looked back at him, all shining eyes. He'd not faced so many Frenchmen at once since the Battle of the Nile—and certainly never so many Frenchwomen at any time at all. He cleared his throat. For half a moment he feared he might accidentally launch into the Articles of War; the laws and punishments pressed against the back of his teeth in all their sonorous familiarity.

But then, right there in the front row sat Stephen. He sat quietly, thin and a bit shabby, ink on one of his cuffs, his chin tipped up and his pale eyes on Jack. He knew nothing of astronomy and cared less, and yet there he was, intent.

Jack spoke first to him, and then to the room, and the voice echoing back to him sounded firm, and calm, and maybe even intelligent.

* * *

Afterward, once he had bowed as deeply as the coat permitted, scarcely had he stepped down from the rostrum before a crowd surrounded him, men and women both calling out with cheerful freedom. The rapid French and heavily accented English had him in a whirl. But he found that they had a common language of sorts, if you also allowed for a great deal of pantomime, and he chatted away about the Jovian moons and the intricacies of orbits to a level of detail he had not enjoyed in a long time. Drumming lunar observations into the heads of midshipmen had not in fact exercised his wits to any degree.

Then of a sudden Stephen was at his elbow, rattling off long sentences in French as easy as kiss my hand. Jack beamed at him. The crowd milled about, bowing, curtseying, calling out one last observation times fifty, obviously prepared for the leavetaking process to last an hour or more. But Stephen was relentless, cutting him out like a French gunboat, towing him off without a backward glance, and all gave way before him.

Now Jack sat stunned in a fine closed carriage, sweating in his hat and cloak, his notes on his knee. "By Jove!" he said, and his voice sounded rather hoarse. "God's my life, Stephen, I never imagined they would take it so well."

Stephen, opposite him, still looked as cool and quiet as he had all day. "You forget how your head for planets and their...their trigonometries...is appreciated far beyond the quarterdeck."

"Perhaps I do," said Jack. "Though it's always a surprise, you know, a room of touch-me-not civilians sitting so quiet for some damned frigate captain." He mulled it over. Always a _surprise_...there was a remark there, he knew there was. If he weren't so winded and all-fired hot, he'd think of it. 

Finally he lowered one window for a grateful gulp of the night air. The carriage was passing smoothly along strange roads; night-blooming flowers scented the breeze; the horses' hooves clopped in brisk rhythm. "I could use a drink," he said. "More than one. I suppose your friend believes in the fruit of the vine and all that?"

"You needn't worry," said Stephen. 

Jack wished he could have said the same to Stephen. He wished he could know, was allowed to know, what it was that hovered just beneath the surface of this whole damned event. Who could they trust? Was Stephen in danger? But as always, he held his tongue.

* * *

Jack had vaguely imagined Stephen's friend to be some physician or other, a naturalist, someone with a ramshackle house full of bones and a table big enough for four. A cold collation, a few bottles of reasonable wine, a night stroll through a little garden with an impromptu lecture about unusual frogs. 

But the carriage drew up in a large courtyard of an even larger building: grand and graceful, more a little palace than even a mansion.

They were not stopping to ask for directions.

" _Capitaine_ ," said a luxuriously-dressed manservant, ushering them into an exquisite parlor. "My master tenders his profound apologies that he is not yet here to greet you. He is in some need of a consultation with _Monsieur le Docteur_ , only for a moment."

"Not at all," Jack said, feeling rather stupid among such finery. Though he thanked the Gib squadron again, and with three times three, for a dress uniform fit for presentation at Court.

"You'll look after the Captain, Henri, won't you," Stephen said. "And how do you go along? Better?"

"Oh yes, _Docteur_." He held up a hand and flexed the wrist this way and that. "It is healing with no pain—I am so very much obliged to you for your advice to the physicians."

Stephen made a deprecating noise at that. "Wine for the Captain," he said, and was gone.

Jack carefully, very carefully, lowered himself into a well-stuffed chair. Both chair and coat held fast, and in fact he might even have called himself comfortable. The room was clean and bright, wood polished like autumn honey and sherry wine, little paintings of elegant French aristocrats with melancholy faces. 

Henri brought him a glass of sillery, the finest shimmer of bubbles clinging to the inside of the glass, and he sipped it gratefully. 

It felt like Stephen was gone a fair while. The Monsieur was an old man, no doubt, and in need of leeching or what-have-you. In the meantime, Jack drank the cool and excellent wine, eased his feet inside his shining buckled shoes, and felt how the land still moved beneath him ever so slightly. 

He hadn't slept well last night—not stage fright, of course, just the natural reaction of a seaman out of his element. He closed his eyes.

* * *

"Jack," said a voice. "Jack, my dear."

How absurd—he had dozed off during their duet, and Stephen was waiting. Jack opened his eyes and straightened his posture, although his little cabin chair felt strange now, soft and enveloping.

He blinked at the apparition before him, and blinked again. It was Stephen. He was almost sure of it. But not at all the Stephen who had been there at the invitation, his sleeve in his ink, nor the Stephen who had traveled with him through enemy country without always remembering to do up his neckcloth.

Stephen wore different clothes now, rich russets and browns, elaborate embroidery on his cuffs and at the kneebands. He was washed and brushed and polished, and he looked as solemn and as fine as a Duke.

Jack rose, casting off sleep as quickly as ever he did on board ship, but still feeling confused, a step behind.

"Captain Aubrey," said this stranger with Stephen's face, "May I introduce to you our host, Adhémar de La Mothe. Adhémar, I beg to present my particular friend, Jack Aubrey, Captain of _Surprise_."

Jack turned to the man stepping forward next to Stephen, and made his leg. Then he rose, and saw Monsieur de La Mothe clearly for the first time.

He was smiling slightly, that was the first thing Jack noticed: his lips, mobile and slender; his eyes, canted like those of a fox.

Jack had seen many a handsome man in his day. Pretty youths signed as midshipmen, lithe foretopmen shirtless in the sun, even officers fit for the stage who drew all eyes as they strode the quarterdeck. It was neither here nor there, and a comely man could do his duty as well as any other. This...was not that.

"Welcome, Captain Aubrey," he said. 

" _Monsieur_ ," Jack managed. Were his eyes blue? One, surely, the clear light of crystal and diamond. The other...was strange, darker, and he could not say why. But both fixed on him, aware, wryly amused.

"Oh I beg," he said. "I am only La Mothe to all my friends, and I would be desolated were you not among them. You are so important to my dear Étienne that I feel I know you." He slipped his arm through Stephen's in a most familiar fashion. Stephen's face changed not at all, but he stood easily against La Mothe in their finery, russet brown and silver blue companionably mingling. 

"Most kind," said Jack. He could not return the compliment of knowledge, not in the least, and felt it deeply. But if a lifetime in the service had taught him anything off the ship, it was to mouth remarks to glittering foreign potentates.

Therefore: "Your invitation is most gracious," he went on, "and your home most beautiful."

La Mothe looked into and through him again with those strange eyes. The smile faded, and in his gentle mourning Jack saw every portrait on the wall. "But most empty," he said. "Too empty, now. I strive against the emptiness every day, Captain, in my little concerts, my suppers and frolics. You do me a great honour to assist me."

Jack could only bow his head to that. "The honour is mine," he said—the traditional response. Predictable, yes, even tedious, but his training had taught him to give the sovereign the final glory and then bow out of the game.

"We must call it a draw," said La Mothe, unexpectedly, genuinely. The returning smile now felt as if they shared a secret. It glowed beneath the sculpture of the face, brought it to life and warmth, and Jack suddenly had no answer. He sought his store of courteous remarks, but it was as if someone had drawn it teasingly just out of reach. 

Just then, thank God, Henri entered the room, and La Mothe turned away to speak to him.

Jack swallowed. His throat was dry; he groped for his wine glass. This was no shabby earnest scientist, no elderly philosopher. Only when Jack was not speaking directly to him could he take it all in. 

Hair cropped at the nape, long and tousled on top, quite to the mode—the fairest blond, almost tow-coloured, and glittering with a powder that could only be true gold dust. A face creamy-pale and fine as porcelain, and a flush upon it not in a roué's blotches, but glowing just lightly upon the cheekbones. Uncanny eyes like sea-ice, lips slightly rosy as if he had been sucking fresh raspberries.

Jack upended his glass for the last few drops. Stephen stood nearby, part of the furnishings, his head bowed to cast his face into shadow.

* * *

He felt a bit better once they were seated for the little supper. The supper room was still as gleaming and elegant as the rest of the magnificent place, but at a scale Jack could understand. Nothing he was used to, of course—he still ducked his head slightly through every doorway, from a lifetime of being a tall man under small decks.

He was seated at La Mothe's right hand, with Stephen on La Mothe's left. This he didn't so much care for; he longed to ask Stephen a few pointed questions, and he was too old and too well-trained to instead make wide eyes at him across the table. 

The other seven guests seemed to be personal friends of the host, shining and chattering like a flock of birds. A tall woman in spectacles on Stephen's left fell into conversation with him often; the others sent their charm hither and thither, and handled Jack as brightly as a new toy.

"In your honour, Captain," said La Mothe, "my chefs have made very special dishes."

Jack bowed in his seat, sighing inwardly. He did love the French way with soft tack, but otherwise their dinners were uncharted shoals; in this strange grand place he knew they must prefer the most elaborate inventions, kickshaws and casseroles full of God knew what. 

The servants brought platter after platter, heaping the table _à la française_ , just like any dinner of Jack's for his officers. This felt familiar. And suddenly, wondrously, so did the sights and scents before him—mutton, by God, a great roasted joint of it, piping hot on a bed of potato and vegetables. In front of Stephen they put a fine fat goose, and Jack half-expected him to do the carving—at cabin dinners they always saved birds for Stephen's knife, for his anatomist's expertise—but of course the servants stepped forward and set to it themselves.

Onions fried in butter, greenstuff, a rich savoury Strasburg pie, turtle soup with claret—everything delighted and comforted him, like the best of a feast at home on _Surprise_ , but with the food fresh and abundant and never a bargeman to be found crawling among the crumbs. 

The guests presented choice servings to one another, bowing and smiling, exclaiming with astonishment. Jack knew it must be a game to them, an English sea captain's dinner as a masquerade, but they went about it so cheerfully that he could not take offense. He contented himself by drinking "A glass of wine with you, ma'am" and "A glass of wine with you, sir" all round the table, letting himself in on the joke. 

The remains of the dishes were at last removed, and a great silver domed platter was laid upon the table along with a silver pitcher.

La Mothe rose. Through his comfortable haze of wine—damned good wine, of course—Jack let himself look, as everyone else was looking. Their host shone with the light of the candles in wall sconces and chandeliers; the luxurious gold and silver embroidery upon his coat, silver-blue as a distant cloud, sparkled as if it were afire. His throat, his wrists, his waist, were as slim and delicate as the stalk of some exotic plant. 

Jack thought he would propose a toast. But he didn't speak, even though the room fell to a suspenseful hush. 

Instead he nodded once to a servant, and the silver cover was lifted to reveal a huge pallid pudding flecked with currants. It was the biggest spotted dog Jack had ever seen, perfect and moist and gleaming. 

The diners applauded, Jack enthusiastically among them, beating his palms together with gusto and crying "Bravo!" Even Stephen seemed impressed, glancing from the platter to La Mothe and back again.

Servants sliced the grand object and served it out with thick custard sauce from the pitcher. Jack would not have believed that the French, of all people, could make a pudding like this. He briefly comforted himself by thinking that perhaps La Mothe's cook had spent some time as a prisoner aboard British ships, but it felt ungrateful, so he stopped.

* * *

After supper, more guests arrived for the music. La Mothe greeted the newcomers with embraces and kisses, men and women alike; Jack's introduction was received with an almost English reserve, but he noticed they were much more free with Stephen's person, and Stephen returned their kisses with aplomb.

La Mothe seated Jack and Stephen in the center of a beautifully draped concert room—but this time he settled Stephen next to Jack, and sat himself on Stephen's other side. Jack, replete with wine and food and extra helpings of pudding, felt more comfortable at once. Now perhaps he could whisper a bit. He grinned at Stephen in preparation; Stephen, as was common with Jack's meaningful grins and winks, looked patiently perplexed. 

Jack was about to lean onto his shoulder and speak...but what would he ask? "What's all this then" seemed a bit broad. "How in God's name does a secret agent remain secret in such finery and lace, with a smile half Apollo and half the other chap?" seemed a bit...personal. Especially since said secret agent had dressed Stephen up in garments almost as fine; and though Stephen didn't need them, Jack would not have insulted him for the world.

La Mothe whispered something in Stephen's ear then, and Stephen turned to him. They spoke together in hushed, liquid French, Stephen gesturing Gallicly with both hands. Jack thought, then, how well he fit here. He belonged—if not exactly among these finely-dressed playacting people of fashion, then still, here in the City of Light, among the scientists, the philosophers, the inquisitive and the clever, where even the silliest beau might attend arcane astronomical disquisitions at the _Institut_ , and where a man of Stephen's shining parts was for once truly valued.

The effervescence from the welcome and the dinner and even the undeniable presence of La Mothe began to drain away. Jack thought of Stephen aboard _Surprise_ , crammed in a cot the size of a coffin. A man who should be making discoveries, discussing with learned colleagues, clean and safe in well-lit rooms, instead stooping over wounded sailors with his sleeves sopping in blood. What did Stephen get? No fine fêtes such as this in his honour. He got danger, filth, impossible odds. He got the reputation of a man who could whip off your leg or part of your skull in a trice. What sort of reward was that?

Yes, secret agents lived in no bed of roses. But if Stephen did not have to waste his time as a ship's surgeon, he could surely be this sort of secret agent instead, living the life of the mind. Jack gazed at the front of the room as the musicians settled into their chairs. He felt very far away. 

The violin player straightened up and tapped his bow; the room quieted with surprising speed. And then, one breath, a pause, and the music began—

Locatelli, and oh, Jack knew the piece at once, and his heart squeezed painfully and thrillingly on the first notes. He had heard it half a hundred times, played it many times more, and still it seized him like the embrace of a long-lost friend. As surprising and fresh and welcome as the scent of land on deck after a long deep-sea crossing— as familiar as his own hands on his own fiddle, as Stephen beside him in the cabin, warm with wine and toasted cheese. How they loved to whirl away on this piece! It made time stop. It made their little wooden world a refuge of peace and joy that they built together, note by note, tumbling along on the rising wave. 

He felt dizzy, forgetting to breathe— or, really, his breathing was caught by the sound, his body working as it did when he played. His muscles burned with the need to move, although he mostly managed to stifle them, having learned his lesson (Stephen was never averse to reminding him, of course, with a warning foot on his or a precise elbow in his side). He couldn't stop himself from turning to Stephen, though, if not to speak yet then at least to see him, to share this feeling before it overflowed. 

Stephen was already looking at him; Jack didn't know for how long. His face was flecked with gold from the candlelight, and his pale eyes looked large and grave. Jack smiled at him, and despite all his good intentions, this once he could not keep still. He grasped Stephen's shoulder, laid his other hand on Stephen's knee, and gently shook him. How he loved to touch Stephen like this, when he was allowed! Jack felt him warming, yielding, under his hands; Stephen took a breath and let it out, and gradually he was transformed by a small but genuine smile. Jack felt it a victory.

He was turning back to pay proper attention to the musicians, when he noticed from the side of his eye that La Mothe had leaned in toward Stephen. Jack couldn't see Stephen's expression, but La Mothe's was certainly a speaking look, pleased and wry, lips pursed and brows arched. Stephen's head moved; Jack could only imagine his silent response. He concentrated very hard on the rise and fall of the music, the precision of the bowing, and paid no further attention to their pantomime conversation. It was none of his concern.

* * *

The concert over, the guests passed in a glittering stream into the ballroom. Tables along the sides of the great room bore ices and confections, elaborately-decorated tiers of them, much more French than the supper. Servants circulated with trays; Jack gladly accepted a glass of something cool that reminded him of arrack-punch. 

Eventually a few guests from the little supper stood with him, chatting in English, presumably for his benefit. They did not at all censor themselves, however: Jack learned the latest gossip about the goings-on of a distinguished elderly man who was bringing ices to his very pretty and very young wife; he heard tales of monetary improprieties among a set of middle-aged financiers; he was regaled with a jest about a renowned horseman just stepping out into the dance, which he was sure would have been very comical indeed had he quite grasped the nuances. He laughed anyway, of course, for it was only polite.

"Madame Duroc is in such—fine fettle, is it said?—yes, fine fettle tonight," said a man with glossy sidewhiskers. The others agreed, humming and nodding toward a stately lady sitting on a chair against the wall, surrounded by youths and girls paying court.

"As she ever is," said someone else. 

"Should there come a day when she does not attend, my heart will start to die," said a young man with a crop of black curls and a very high collar.

Jack eyed her with interest. She was handsome, a fine solid figure of a woman, but she did not look to be the Helen of Troy this remark implied. She spoke with great attention and spirit to the young people around her, however, and they all seemed familiar and even comfortable, despite her grandeur.

"Is she here every time, then?" he asked the group.

" _Capitaine_ ," said the man with sidewhiskers, speaking as if confidentially, but loud enough for the whole little group to hear. "I must confess to you that she is always invited, always."

La Mothe was approaching the chair now. The crowd melted back slightly into a half-circle, as if they had learned it in dancing school. He stepped forward and bowed deeply; she gave him her hand, and he held it with the very tips of his fingers in an elegant tableau.

"She is the fine lady to the courtly knight. He quite depends upon her," someone said. 

"A widow?" asked Jack. She was distinctly older than La Mothe, but that was no barrier when hearts—or indeed money—were involved.

"Not at all," said the man with sidewhiskers. "Her husband is a banker, as solid in his dealings as he is in his person."

"Oh!" Jack watched the illicit couple speaking together, right in front of the entire room. "And everyone knows?"

"Of course!" said the woman in spectacles who had had such conversation with Stephen at the table.

"Poor fellow," said Jack.

"Who?" said the young man with the curls.

"Well, if he has lost his heart," said Jack lamely, feeling provincial. "And if she is not free, d'you see."

They laughed, not unkindly. 

"Oh, it would not suit our sweet La Mothe at all, sir, her being free," said the woman in spectacles, patting Jack's shoulder with her fan. 

A few others chimed in: "He adores women beyond measure—" "They are his dearest friends—" "Just do not ask him to allow one into his boudouir!" "Well you cannot say he did not try, but—" "If only he could have married a gentleman, like—" 

"Do not shock the Captain!" said the man with sidewhiskers rather sternly. "He is our guest, as well as La Mothe's."

Someone made a tsking sound. "You underestimate him. Our _Capitaine_ is a man of experience, surely."

Jack tore his eyes from the scene of La Mothe taking chaste leave of his lady, and smiled gamely. "Oh, no, never worry for me. I've—" _been in the Navy all my life_ , he almost went on, in his traditional response to this kind of thing. But he choked it off at the last moment, with its quip about Rears And Vices. Somehow it didn't seem quite patriotic.

"—I've been around the world," he finished instead. 

The group jostled him amiably; someone cried "You see?" in triumph.

"Ah, I am corrected, and gladly," said the man with sidewhiskers. He gave an intricate shrug of the sort Jack never saw among his own countrymen. "I should have known... La Mothe knows how to choose his friends." 

He gazed out to where La Mothe passed among the guests, and Jack saw a fond, indulgent look on his face. Others murmured agreement. Jack suddenly liked them all very much.

"Do you dance, on these journeys round the world?" asked the woman in spectacles, and though Jack tried to explain that he didn't, or at least not to this level of sophistication, they all surrounded him and swept him out to the floor for a dance in squares and rings. And unlike the picture of Parisian high society he had had in his mind, they helped him along even when he put a foot wrong.

* * *

He tired soon, however—from the efforts of speaking at the _Institut_ , or from having fallen out of his habit of pacing the quarterdeck and taking his swims, he could not be sure. In any case he withdrew to the sideline, mopping his forehead and drinking more of the splendid punch.

He was no longer a center of attention, at least for the moment, which was a relief. He stood with one hand in the small of his back, watching the dancers sort themselves into new groups and begin to move through another figure. Their silks and satins and velvets glowed like a garden of rich, ever-changing flowers.

And like flowers, their faces turned to follow the sun: La Mothe moved gracefully through the room, stopping to speak to guests and servants alike, and everyone watched him go. He did not stride like a gallant, nor mince like a wigged courtier. He was his own creature, flowing and turning, weaving in and through crowds like a golden thread in one vast embroidery.

His face brightened abruptly, from an enigmatic sculpture to a glowing, living man, and Jack followed his eyeline to see Stephen entering through the main doorway. Where Stephen had been Jack did not know, nor had he sought him out—the agent must have room to work, after all, and Jack willingly performed his duty as distraction and decoration, if he could do nothing else. 

Now he watched as La Mothe saw him, crossed to him, slipped an arm round his waist and leaned to his ear. Was he whispering? Or was it one of those kisses?

Jack brooded. The situation made less sense than ever... if Stephen had come along for some secret government purpose, what could it be that would only have him dine and listen to music like any other guest? The passing or retrieval of information? If so, it was not quite fair to drag Jack into such a damned elaborate cover story when simple coded letters had always served in the past. And always before, even if Jack had not been told the specifics of a mission, he had at least been warned that it was one.

He took another cup from a passing servant and watched La Mothe speaking intently to Stephen, their faces close, that hand still on his waist. One could almost imagine they themselves were about to dance.

What had that blighter said, one of the merry people in the chattering crowd— _If only he could have married a gentleman, like—_

Like who?

He told himself not to be foolish. The idea was absurd; for one, Stephen wasn't 'a gentleman'. ...But yes, yes of course he was, as strange as the term seemed for a man who had never put himself forward like some kind of coxcomb. A Dublin physician with a gold-headed cane, a Spanish castle, money and land. He shot dead true to the mark; he didn't care for fox-hunting, but he rode like the North wind. 

Stephen was shaking his head. La Mothe remained so close to him, leaning again to his ear, and this time he laid one long-fingered hand gently on the side of Stephen's neck. 

What was this? Jack clenched his fist around his cup. Was there a story that the Parisian gossips knew but he didn't, about La Mothe and his ways and his wish for a certain gentleman? Stephen was standing quiet enough in his grasp, but even from this distance he seemed rather still and— not timid, not Stephen, but hesitant. And he was shaking his head as La Mothe murmured to him.

They turned together and walked the length of the room, disappearing through the doors at the end. Or had Stephen turned to go and La Mothe followed?

Jack drained his cup and thrust it at a startled servant, then stalked toward the doors. 

They led to an orangery, warm and fragrant, where some guests sat or stood together in the dimness. Jack could not have missed La Mothe's distinctive silhouette, so after a pause to reconnoiter he made his way through to the doors standing open to the gardens.

The night air had cooled appreciably, which Jack savored in his velvet and heavy silk. People strolled in pairs into the darkness of tall shrubbery. And there, distantly glittering in the moonlight, was La Mothe, steering Stephen beneath an arbor laced with vines.

Taking great care to walk on soft turf rather than gravel, Jack stealthily made his way to the other side of the shrubbery closest to the arbor. He stood in thick shadow, his head inclined, listening. A gentleman did not listen at doors. But in wartime, as Stephen had so often reminded him, a prudent commander always gathered intelligence before an attack. Or a rescue.

It was in French, as he should have anticipated. He closed his eyes and tried to listen harder, but they spoke so quickly. He supposed he should be grateful they were speaking at all, rather than— He instantly dashed that thought away and instead concentrated on Stephen, who was saying something about _décevoir_ —had it anything to do with _au revoir_? Was he trying to leave?

A group of young guests, laughing and shrieking at some game, stopped nearby to toss someone's shoe back and forth among them. And La Mothe and Stephen switched to English, at which Jack rejoiced.

"You should trust him," said La Mothe. He spoke gently, not an imperative but a coaxing, leading hand.

"I do," said Stephen at once.

"Trust him with _this_."

An impatient noise. "It is not a matter of trust."

"Don't you think he should know?"

Jack frowned. Perhaps... this might truly just be an intelligence mission after all? Trouble with some contact or other, the minutiae of information exchange that was never Jack's best field, and nothing he wanted to put his foot into. If he waited, surely Stephen would tell him all about it once they got home.

"He knows all he needs to know," Stephen replied after a while, but he sounded more defeated than Jack cared for. "All that will keep him—"

"Ignorant?"

"Safe."

"Safe from what, pray?"

"Do not be disingenuous."

La Mothe laughed softly, but with great sympathy, not mocking at all. "Oh, yes, how I do know, of course." There was rustling, as if he might be pulling Stephen close. Jack had to admit that it was a strange sort of secret-agentry.

"Étienne," La Mothe went on, more muffled now. "Do you truly believe that your particular friend, this companion of your days, would rather himself be safe? Above everything? Aubrey does not strike me as that kind."

Jack's reaction was immediate, the training of a lifetime: he flushed up hot even to the ears and took an involuntary step back—thankfully still onto turf rather than the noisy gravel of the paths. Listening at keyholes! Was this how an Englishman behaved? Even cast adrift in the depths of enemy country, that was no excuse to—

"Adhémar," Stephen sighed. "I cannot tell him, I _cannot_. There is no room in his philosophy."

"Do you fear that you will lose him," said La Mothe, and there was a long, long pause, Jack standing frozen and silent, instinct and breeding warring within him.

Stephen never did answer. La Mothe began to murmur, " _Étienne, mon pauvre ami, mon cher_ " in the most loving way, and under that slight cover Jack retreated, cold to his bones despite the summer air. 

_He knows all he needs to know_. Jack sank onto the stone step of a garden folly with a little coppered roof and put his head in his hands. Keeping this secret, of all things! Folding it in to the spying, the moonlight missions, yet another thing that Jack needn't be told. It was enough to make him despair, discovering not only that the gulf between Stephen and himself was wider than he'd ever imagined, but that it was Stephen willingly doing the digging. Pushing him away.

 _I cannot tell him_. Not the covert connexion itself making him so unhappy, but the spectre of Jack finding out. Captain Aubrey, figure of rectitude, reciting the Articles every Sunday like the voice of some puffed-up minor god. And Stephen unable to share this deepest secret of his heart, never even telling Jack of La Mothe before, not at any time! _A friend_ , he'd said so calmly. 

All those letters. Stephen must have arranged this entire journey, the _Institut_ , as a perfect reason to see La Mothe again. Disguised from everyone, everyone! Two governments, a prestigious scientific body...and Captain Aubrey of the Royal Navy.

But... with Stephen, Jack had long since ceased to be merely this Captain Aubrey of the Royal Navy. Or thought he had. He had stepped into the cabin and felt his essential loneliness dissolve, with Stephen there sketching a pile of bones or stretched out on a locker to read. He had sat in the stern gallery in the late watches of the night, gladly aware of Stephen beside him in the dark. 

In that cabin, in that gallery, he was Jack, he was _oh your soul to the devil, Jack Aubrey_ , he was the man Stephen's hands had stitched back together again and again, soul as well as body. And Stephen— he had thought Stephen felt the same, Stephen finding something with Jack that let him be the Stephen he could not be elsewhere. 

Jack clutched at his hair, coming loose from its queue. Stephen, his Stephen, and this strange golden figure from a folktale, stepping lynx-eyed from pagan glades to enchant with his song. Stephen, so willingly in the man's slender arms but sounding so very unhappy. 

He felt strange, sorrow and longing and anger together, with a physical hunger dawning beneath that made him very uncomfortable indeed; his hands remembered holding on to Stephen in the concert room, palms hot against the muscle of his shoulder and thigh. He tried forcing himself simply to think _poor old Stephen_ , combing out the snarl of feelings into plain compassion, but they would not go. His thoughts, his memories, could only cascade without control: Stephen by him in the cabin, the music from their hearts and their hands creating something from nothing, beauty and wonder; Stephen smudgy with ink, patchy with dried blood, rumpled from short sleep and stealing sips from Jack's coffee cup; Stephen in the stern gallery, his warmth and his voice and his body in the dark; Stephen in the richly embroidered coat, La Mothe's lips at his cheek and arm round his waist, _Étienne, mon cher_.

The music from the ballroom flowed out through the orangery and into the night air, distant and sad, as painful as the memory of joy that has slipped through one's hands and been lost.

* * *

Jack rubbed his eyes dry and returned to the party, with a detour to the privy and then an anteroom with washstands where he could splash his face and rebind his hair. Other men lounged about in there, taking snuff or having a valet adjust an elaborate neckcloth, but thankfully none of them tried to draw him into conversation.

He threw himself into the rest of the festivities as into a crucial cutting-out expedition, taking no quarter, making himself dance, drink, smile. No one would be left with a memory of _le Capitaine_ as anything but cordial. 

Once, though, when he turned away to select a glass of negus, one of the guests from dinner chanced to pass and made a concerned face. Was the Captain quite well? He grinned, escorted her into the next figure, and showed her he was well, very well indeed.

* * *

At last the other guests had all departed; it was late. After the tumult of kisses for Stephen and La Mothe, and of course bows for _le Capitaine_ , the vast front hall echoed with emptiness.

Jack felt slightly more himself. Or at least he was tired out with dancing, and his head sang with wine.

"My dears," said La Mothe, taking both of them by the hand. Jack returned his grasp by reflex; his fingers were cool and firm. "I will bid you a good night. Henri will see you up. Anything you need, anything at all, you must not hesitate. Agreed?"

He looked to Jack. His eyes, crystalline and dark, were still as strange and beguiling as they had been hours before. And now Jack even felt warmly toward him as one felt for a fellow man, not a statue. For Stephen loved La Mothe. And Stephen deserved to be happy. 

And so Jack bowed his head with a smile that, despite everything, didn't feel forced. "I struggle to imagine anything lacking," he said, "but agree, as you ask it."

La Mothe then looked rather longer into Stephen's face. Stephen did not smile; he looked white and worn. " _Bonne nuit, Adhémar._ "

" _Bonne nuit et fais de beaux rêves, mon cher, mes chers_." La Mothe pressed their hands and let them go.

Jack glanced down once from the grand stair as he followed Henri up, and saw La Mothe, standing alone in a pool of moonlight. For a moment he was still, glowing like a figure of mist, then he turned and departed into the darkened house; his coat, his shining hair, the jeweled buckles upon his shoes, glinted one last time and were gone.

* * *

"Good God," said Jack, when Henri had left the chamber and closed the double doors. "We could fit the gundeck in here."

Certainly not lengthwise, but widthwise, and very grand indeed for a bedroom: a good ten fathom across, with a huge postered bed, a breakfast table that looked big enough for a full dinner with guests, a close stool in a distant corner behind a painted screen, and several _chaise longues_ grouped near a grand bay window. Thick carpets muffled the floor, tall beeswax candles glowed serenely. The window put him pleasantly in mind of his stern gallery somehow, something about the shape, but the rest most definitely did not.

He looked inside one of the wardrobes and saw his clothes neatly hung up—aired and pressed, too. The nightshirt was not borrowed; Killick had grudgingly allowed that it should pass muster, as long as he did not attend formal functions in it.

He gladly began to work his way out of his stiff silk-velvet carapace, button by button. Henri had expected to valet them into their nightwear; Jack had had to speak rather forcefully to make him understand that he begged to decline. It was not quite well-bred, Jack supposed, but he had reached his limit.

"Ahh, now a man can breathe," he said, coatless. He turned to hang it up, and saw Stephen, still fully clad to the top of his high neckcloth, giving the room in general a wicked reptilian glare. And before Jack could inquire, Stephen hissed something in French that he assumed was uncomplimentary.

"Stephen?"

"A single-bedded room," Stephen said. "Single-bedded, forsooth! And Monsieur living in a house rising floor upon floor! Bedchambers, parlors, sitting rooms, drawing rooms, vast they are and all, all empty, the creature."

Jack looked at the bed—huge, pillowy, bolsters embroidered almost as heavily as Stephen's borrowed coat. "Well," he said uncertainly, "I don't expect to feel crowded." He had not even thought; as with so many coaching inns, crowded hotels, modest guest rooms, even some ship's cabins, he had just expected they would share. It was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing troublesome—except, he supposed, for the times that Stephen was unable to stop Jack's snoring by rolling him over or pinching him awake.

Stephen ignored him and stalked to the bell-pull, giving it a hard yank. His face, so pale this whole journey, was flushed to the hairline. "It is too much," he muttered. "Too much by half."

Jack stood with the heavy coat in his hands. "I am sorry about the snoring, Stephen," he said. "But I suppose you must do what's best."

Stephen looked at him as if for the first time, and swallowed. "I apologise, Jack. It is only— Adhémar has a certain...sense of humor, let us say, with which..." He trailed off.

"I'm not sure what you need apologise for." Jack hung the heavy coat up with an effort. "We often share on the road, don't we?" He hoped he didn't sound as plaintive as he felt. 

"Yes," said Stephen.

"Well then." Jack unwound his neckcloth and hung it up as well. It niggled at him, though: perhaps it was unsophisticated, to share a room in a place such as this. Perhaps sleeping in with him made Stephen seem backward. Or perhaps Stephen was simply tired of it. 

He was moodily unbuttoning his breeches at the knee when Henri tapped on the doors and opened them. "Messieurs?"

"Ah...I forgot that there was a message I wanted to send to your master," said Stephen.

"Yes, _Docteur_."

Stephen paused a moment, and then spoke in French that Jack could not quite follow. Henri bowed and left.

"He is always full of surprises, our Adhémar." Stephen tugged at his neckcloth.

They proceeded to undress, and Jack felt better. This was more like it, he and Stephen after a late night, shoes and waistcoats and linen everywhere. Conversation, perhaps, but also comfortable silences.

He peeled down to just his shirt and then to nothing, splashing himself at the washstand. On with his best linen nightshirt, which Killick had starched to within an inch of its life, presumably to compensate for its being rather plain. He climbed into bed and lay there, blinking drowsily, the wine fumes gone to his head. 

After a time, Stephen climbed in on the other side. He wore a nightshirt Jack had never seen before: stiff new linen the colour of cream, a long goffered frill on the front, embroidered in silver thread at the cuffs.

"I say." Jack reached out—he had to lean, for the bed was very large, even for a tall man with long arms—and tugged at the frill. "Where has this been?"

Stephen's lips pressed thinly together. "It belongs," he said, "to Adhémar."

"Oh!" Jack smoothed the frill down against Stephen's chest and withdrew his hand. He felt strangely awkward, in a way he never did in their inns and cabins. "Good night, then."

"God keep you till the morrow, my dear." Stephen snuffed the candles on his side of the bed and lay down, facing away. 

Jack slid down beneath the covers, sinking into the great soft pillow, but left his candles to burn just a little longer that he might enjoy this moment. He sighed. Stephen was by him till morning, and there was nothing more to worry about. He had journeyed safely, he had acquitted himself well before the _Institut_ , he had even survived meeting the incomparable La Mothe, who—

His eyes widened. Sleepiness and wine-haze faded before a sudden chill.

He was a fool. Such a fool! He would blame it on the drink, the late night, but he knew in his heart it was his own thrice-damned fault.

 _I don't expect to feel crowded,_ he'd said, and with great sad eyes like a spaniel, no doubt. When all the time, surely it was that Stephen had expected— had hoped— not to be roomed in here with Jack, but with his friend. His other friend. His....

But he had chosen Jack in the end, hadn't he? And if La Mothe himself had put Stephen in this room, perhaps he did not welcome Stephen to his side, for whatever mad reason. For the first time Jack began to take against the man. 

He turned onto his side, facing away from Stephen, staring at the candle flames. He had developed the skill of falling fast asleep in a moment; anyone whose life and livelihood depended on the sea did the same if he could. But now he lay in the largest and softest bed imaginable, no weather nor sea nor enemy in the offing to disturb him, and he could not even close his eyes. His heart felt like it was beating too hard. 

At last, he sat up. This would not do. Stephen lay very still, but from his breathing and the set of his back he was obviously nothing close to asleep. And he must have had such a terrible night, La Mothe pushing him to reveal their secret, Stephen so sure that Jack would never understand. The idea went against the selfish, confused need deep in Jack's breast, but in the end, Stephen must be looked after. And if Jack were not allowed to do it, he would nevertheless make sure it happened.

"Stephen," he said. "If you want another room, don't you know...that is, you should sleep where you like."

Stephen said, his back still just as rigid, "I am sleeping at this very moment."

"You'll forgive me for contradicting you." Jack kneaded the coverlet between his hands. "I only meant that if you wanted— if you'd like a change. One pull on the bell and they'll arrange it. I'm sure that Monsieur— that is, your La Mothe— would see to it."

Stephen rolled onto his stomach and pulled a pillow over his head.

Jack sat there, hands knotted in his lap. Even the irritable presence beside him was familiar and beloved, and like a coward Jack let the minutes go by, the candles burning ever down. It was so hard to be forced to give up something he hadn't entirely understood until this very night, to give it up only now that he felt the fullness of it— or the _almost_ fullness, the knife-edge of realisation and hope receding forever behind him. It was profoundly unfair. But then, he knew that fact of life already, after spending his at the mercy of wind and wave. And more than that, far more: whatever Stephen needed, he must have. 

He straightened his spine.

"Stephen," he said again more firmly. "We must speak."

"Sleep, you mean," said Stephen, muffled by the pillow. "We must _sleep_."

But Jack had overcome far more resistance than this, and paid no attention. "I like your friend La Mothe," he said. "Extremely. He seems a— a fine fellow."

Stephen did not move. He scarcely breathed. He seemed frozen, and Jack plunged onward. 

"He's very handsome, of course, could put him in a gallery—though I must say I am damned if I know where he got his eyes, never seen the like." He cleared his throat. "But the point is— the point, Stephen, is that I am sure he is wise. And you should listen to him." 

The silent moments after this ticked down like a great case clock, solemn and heavy. Jack felt very alert, as when waiting for a charge to detonate.

"...listen to..." Stephen said from beneath the pillow. Then he surged up, supported on his arms. "What did he tell you!" His face was ghastly and perhaps even frightened, although Jack had little basis for comparison, having so rarely seen Stephen afraid. 

Jack held the line. "You know you can tell me anything, Stephen." 

Stephen only stared at him, so Jack went on, desperately, "I know you don't believe it, but it is the case. I ain't just some... some _Captain Aubrey_ , you know!"

"Mother of God," said Stephen, white to the lips. "Please, my dear, for any kindness you may once have borne me— what did he tell you?"

"Nothing," said Jack, which was technically the truth. "I only wanted you to know— All is well, Stephen. I understand."

"Oh you do." How weak his voice was!

"Yes. And I—" he said this next as firmly as he could, even if he could not bring himself to smile: "—I am happy for you. Truly."

Stephen's brows drew together.

"He is a good fellow and I am glad you— you two are— have each other," Jack finished, and set his teeth. 

"We have each other," Stephen echoed. His arms folded abruptly and he sank back down; he looked up sideways from the pillow. 

"Yes," said Jack stoutly. 

Stephen took a long, shaky breath. "Oh, Jack," he said. "Jack Aubrey, you are a danger."

Jack had no answer to that. It had taken all his power to say it, however incoherently; now he only waited for Stephen to understand, and choose, and leave him.

But now Stephen was— was he laughing? Almost silently, just little chuffs of air, but yes, from anyone else it would be a laugh.

"God and Mary," Stephen groaned. His smile was bitter. "Should I ever get to lauding my skills, let us remember this. Only a line or two in a soft place, and here am I, ' _what did he tell you!_ '" He laughed again, such as it was. "You _interrogated_ me, Jack, and brilliantly too." 

It hurt Jack clean through to hear that. He didn't understand what Stephen was laughing about—it didn't sound like relief at all—but he did understand interrogation, too well, and Stephen's history with it. 

"Don't," he said, and was unable to stop himself from reaching out to touch Stephen's hand. His memory of bearing Stephen away from the torturer's den in Mahon, Stephen's agonised face, his poor fingers.... 

Stephen didn't pull away. He looked long at Jack, and then shook his head. "I am sorry." 

"It's all right," said Jack. He carefully held Stephen's fingers in his, and now it didn't feel so strange. Perhaps it was the house, La Mothe, even Paris, but now he felt like the man who could at last simply touch Stephen like this and be understood.

"It isn't," Stephen said crisply.

"Stephen, I said I'm glad for you, and I—"

But Stephen overbore him: " _No_ , Jack. Listen, now, will you. I'm sorry. I am sorry to be so tempted to lie to you, my dear, when I swore in my heart and to your very face that never would I do so willingly." 

"Lie about what—about La Mothe?"

"About Adhémar, indeed, but not as you think." Stephen sighed. "Let us put Satan behind me, shall we, and have the truth." 

A warm thrill prickled the back of Jack's neck, whether excitement or fear he could not tell. Before action he had often felt much the same, and had never been able to make the distinction then either. "Very well."

Stephen sat up and faced him directly. Candlelight picked out the shining paleness of his eyes. "It would be so easy to agree with you. To say, oh yes, Adhémar and I. It would be...safer. Does that sound strange? But it scorches my very tongue even to think of it, soul, to look you in the eye like this and be false, even if not to do so will destroy me."

"Then you and he...."

"He is a friend," said Stephen, "and we share many things. But not— not my heart, as he knows."

Jack thought through the evening as best he could, despite the weariness and the wine and his own inner bruises. "I don't understand," he admitted reluctantly. "You must enlighten me, Stephen."

"Adhémar is..." Stephen paused. "His life has been troubled, and sometimes lonely. As my friend, he wants above everything to somehow give me my heart's desire."

"And yet it isn't him."

"No, I'm sorry to say." That smile again, bitter, rueful. "Haven't you guessed?"

Stephen was cat-quick with a sword. Jack had seen it: a moment of stillness and guard, and then his body flickering to the left, his blade to the right, and off he went while his opponent had scarcely begun to feel the mortal strike. And now, before Jack's eyes could follow, Stephen had rolled out of bed and gone to the great window.

Jack's hand lay empty, feeling a cool hollow where Stephen's fingers had been. He was dazed, winded, his chest tight and echoing with the unruly thumping of his pulse. He stared across the room at Stephen, sihouetted in moonlight, and saw how he was braced, his thin shoulders squared like a fighter against the rope—stiff as a wounded man, as if his own sudden strike had turned in his hand and slipped between his ribs. 

After the flash of a distant cannon, but before the roar and the crash, was the silence. Jack sat in this silent moment, breathed in against the pressure. And then down it came upon him. 

Only now did he understand everything he had heard, everything he had seen, what Stephen felt—felt for _him!_ —a glimpse only, but a glimpse like a crack in a furnace door, the roaring brightness inside white-hot and overwhelming. 

_to somehow give me my heart's desire_

No one had ever accused Jack Aubrey of being quick with a riddle. The one for codes and ciphers and intricate lockboxes, that was Stephen. Stephen could sit for hours, picks laid out on the cabin table, tinkering his way into some impregnable cylinder that held the answer to a whole dangerous mission.

It was Stephen himself who was the cipher, the lockbox. And here he had flung himself unguarded and open, unexpected riches spilling through Jack's hands.

He must catch them somehow, catch and keep. He _must_. His head spun.

Jack had of course been left winded and dazed many a time, scrambling at the front of a boarding party only to get knocked down. And the important thing was never to let it stop you. No matter the wound, no matter the hazard, you got up, you went forward. 

And so he followed Stephen to the window. 

Stephen, hands clasped tightly behind his back, stared out at the night as if watching the rise of a rough following sea. He bristled all over like a cat, and Jack knew better than to put out a hand to him, though it was difficult. 

"I'm sorry to be so slow," Jack said. "But it's a startling thing, you know, to get what you want all at once."

Stephen cut his eyes sidelong at him in a glare. "Nonsense."

"I should think I'd—"

" _Nonsense_ ," Stephen said more harshly still. "And you will cease to belabor me on the topic, if you please."

"I must." 

"What you must do is leave me be." He gazed out the window again, and moonlight outlined every feature in white and blue. "By morning you'll have come to your senses."

Jack knew it wasn't wise with Stephen in such a state, but he smiled. He couldn't help it; his blood was tingling like champagne. "My senses are very well, thank you." 

"Jack Aubrey, do you think I've spent all this time with you without my eyes and ears?" His voice was urgent. "I tell you I know you, and no matter what your kindness and your pity may lead you to think, this is not where your heart lies."

Jack crossed his arms over his chest, feeling faintly ridiculous having an argument with Stephen in their nightclothes, even if Stephen's were worthy of a prince. "Well who's the one with my heart, anyhow? Me, that's who. And I— Well, I— I feel—" it felt strange to try to form it into words, especially right at Stephen's forbidding profile, and he stopped. 

A fatal mistake, for Stephen faced him, triumphant. "Oh yes," he said. "And when did this _feeling_ come about, pray?"

"Looking back, I can see it for a long time."

"Not looking back," said Stephen, crisp as a schoolmaster. "When did it come to you in itself?"

"Well... Tonight, I suppose." 

Stephen shook his head, but his voice softened a trifle. "Poor Jack. It's not your fault, of course; he is a master of scenery and theatrics. Not to mention fine wine."

Jack frowned. "What are you on about?"

"La Mothe, my dear. You must know that he wanted this exact thing to happen." He sighed and sat down on one of the chaise longues, the hard, bristling posture suddenly bowed into resignation.

After one step, Jack realised he must not try to sit by Stephen, not yet. So he sat gingerly upon the next chaise and asked, "Are you saying this has all been some kind of trick?" 

"Not a trick, not he—he is kind at heart, and in any case would never use a guest so."

"Then what?" Jack leaned with his arms on his knees, as if listening to a pre-battle briefing, gown notwithstanding.

Stephen looked at him inscrutably for a long moment. Then: "When you were a boy," he began unexpectedly, "did you never hear the fable of the dog and the manger?"

"Of course! My old nurse told 'em by the bushel. A hound crouches on the donkey's dinner and won't let anyone else get a look in, that sort of thing."

"And what if the dog has spent a whole long evening being shown the manger, how rare and fine it is, and how beloved by the donkey. Hm? Might he not suddenly fear it being taken from him? Might he not lie upon it—just on principle?" 

Jack might have been imagining the innuendo there at the last, but then he might not, and his face felt warm. "That's rather hard," he said. 

"The dog loves the manger for its warmth and comfort, its familiarity—he is used to it, and would gladly cleave to it for the rest of his life." Stephen spoke gently, remorselessly. "But the hay therein has no nourishment for him. And he must not fool himself into believing it does. That is nothing but jealous possession, Jack. That is nothing but fear."

The moon cast Stephen's face in silver stone, unreachable. Jack felt abruptly uneasy; he remembered the rising of the strange pressure in his chest and his throat, and how part of it was undeniably that feeling of _mine_. La Mothe's arm in Stephen's had meant no room for Jack's; his whisper in Stephen's ear had left Jack out of the secret.

But even as his thoughts roiled for a moment, he watched Stephen, and he saw more in Stephen's eyes than he knew Stephen would want him to. There was a longing there, a wish, no matter how denied, how ruthlessly suppressed.

And he knew more about himself now than Stephen could know, as well. _Mine_ , that was part of it, but not the all—far from it. That was only the quickmatch, burning inexorably down until it hit the spark, igniting the powder that had lain long and quiet and ready in Jack's heart. It had burst with the pain of any cannonfire, yes, but with much more than that: startlement and wonder and joy, the wakening of true desire, a hope that echoed long and long, something new and strong and inescapable.

Stephen didn't know, not yet. But he would. Jack thought of the borrowed clothes on Stephen, the fine silk and glittering thread, the very ruffle on his nightshirt, La Mothe smoothing and shining him and presenting him before Jack like a prize. But that wasn't what Jack loved: his Stephen was smudged with ink and blood, quick of temper, lean as a rapier, lost in the glory of animal and bird, puzzling and proud and delicate with a duetto. At home within Jack's heart forever. 

Jack smiled at him again, but it only meant that Stephen's shoulders hunched up in self-protection. So Jack made himself solemn—he should have remembered that when Stephen was ill, speaking too sweetly to him had never got him to take his medicine. He'd just as soon have flung the spoon at you and the tonic overboard. 

"It's a thought, old Stephen," he said. "And I see where it takes you that way. But you're no bed of hay, even if I am a disagreeable cur." Stephen stirred, but before he could speak, Jack went on, "And La Mothe is certainly no donkey! He wouldn't be pleased with you for that, I collect."

Stephen scowled. "I would call him a donkey to his face after his foolish plans tonight."

"I suppose you would at that." The smile tugged at Jack's lips, though he valiantly fought it. "But as for me, I'm grateful. He showed me to myself. Perhaps it takes me a while to get where I'm going, that's all."

"Jack," said Stephen warningly.

"Since you started this hay business," Jack said over him, "remember that a man on horseback can outrun even the fastest frigate—never tell Tom Pullings I admitted as much!—but the frigate goes places a horse never could. How about that, eh?"

"Aesop, God rest his grand pagan soul, was master of the allegory. Let us admit that you are not."

"Oh, perhaps," said Jack. "You're supposed to be the one with the intellectuals in this association, my dearest Stephen. When they're working, anyhow."

Stephen looked fractious and put out, but said nothing. Surely he was thinking up some new line of approach, a new manoeuvre in his losing battle.

 _Never mind all that_ , Jack thought with delight. Go straight at 'em. Board 'em in the smoke. Now that was his kind of fight.

So he pushed himself off his chaise and dropped to one knee before Stephen. Stephen startled, eyes narrowing, but did not flee. Jack laid a hand on Stephen's shoulder, unhesitating, and stroked the warm crisp linen with his fingertips. Inside the beautiful borrowed shirt, behind the embroidery, Stephen's bare skin shivered as with ague.

Perhaps it should have felt strange, to lean to Stephen and kiss him. Not as La Mothe had kissed his friends, with those easy touches of cheek and lip, the flutter of a bright bird settling among its flock. Jack kissed Stephen long and firmly, savoring his mouth, their evening stubble softly scraping, and it did not in the end feel strange at all. It felt bright and dangerous and new and familiar at once, and only fed the growing want in Jack's body. Stephen's breath sped up until he was gasping, his eyes clenched tightly as if in pain, but his hands remained flat upon his knees. 

Jack stroked the lean muscle of Stephen's shoulder, drew his mouth slowly along his cheekbone, sighed into his ear. He felt drugged by the scent and the heat and the feel of him. "Come back to bed," he said. "Please, do, Stephen."

Stephen shifted, as if he would reply, but the sound caught in his throat. Jack slid both arms around him and held on. He wanted so badly to comfort him, to whisper to him, _Don't be afraid_. But Stephen disdained open comfort, he denied his own fear to the last, and the desperate strength of his pride itself would keep him from anything he needed badly enough.

So Jack only kissed his throat, his jaw, again and again his mouth, and hoped a grain of comfort would come through somehow. 

At long last, Stephen's hands crept up to grasp Jack by the upper arms. Jack smiled against Stephen's lips, greatly relieved. "Come, we—"

But the hands tightened, and all at once Jack found himself borne heavily down to the carpet, flat on his back with Stephen upon him. At least it hadn't been far to fall.

Jack's body hummed and throbbed. He gazed up at Stephen, who stared down at him, breathing heavily. 

Then Stephen, his face a moonlit mask, sat up astride Jack's chest. Jack could feel his nakedness beneath the nightshirt, straddling him.

"Stephen," he gasped.

"Is this what you want," said Stephen. He rucked the nightshirt up, his hardness revealed. His eyes were like flat silver pennies.

Jack was beyond coherent speech. He fumbled his hands to Stephen's taut thighs, stroking them.

"If it is," Stephen said, still cool and distant, "then have it."

This was all entirely new to Jack, and the small part of his mind that could still think was trying to signal him something, but the rest of him was too far gone. He craned up awkwardly, tugging Stephen closer, and with hand and mouth he took him in.

Stephen jolted as if he'd been struck, and choked, "Jack— I didn't—"

But he did not pull away, and Jack was preoccupied, learning how to keep his teeth out of the way, clumsy and eager. He was afire from head to foot, Stephen's light weight nothing, his scent and his taste everything. The awkwardness bothered him not at all—he'd been a bumbling puppy when first he'd gone to bed with a girl, and so with this. 

So with his Stephen, familiar and entirely new. The very fact that he could reduce Stephen to shaky gasps like this, unmake him, it was glorious. Like battle, like music, like everything he had ever known with Stephen near him. And the moment when all of Stephen's muscles went tight and then slack, his head flung back and his throat working, it was such sudden unguarded vulnerability, all laid in Jack's hands like an offering. Jack was overcome, letting Stephen slip from his mouth, and spending himself without even being touched.

He breathed hard, almost laughing, gripping two handfuls of Stephen's nightshirt in his fists. Sweat prickled in his hair. 

"Oh," said Stephen, scarcely more than a husked breath out. He rubbed his hands over his face and remained hidden there behind them.

Jack yawned, feeling his expanding chest rise under Stephen, who still sat there in a pale rumple of nightshirt. He loved the feeling of Stephen upon him. He could have fallen asleep right there, almost, with just a bit more give underneath. The carpet was lush of its kind, but not to the pillowy depth of the bed. 

"Jack." Stephen lowered his hands abruptly. "My dear. I am so— so sorry."

"Hmm?" said Jack, and writhed himself in a stretch. Stephen started at the movement, then leapt to his feet and stood looking down with a face of strange indecisive distress. Even the ruffle down his chest looked dispirited.

"I must apologise," Stephen said. "I had no right to— to put you to the test."

Jack pondered, but he was so sleepy, and it all slipped from his grasp. "I'm lost in the fog," he said with contentment. "But whatever it is, let's not lose sleep over it, hey?"

He reached one hand up to Stephen. Stephen stood frozen at first, but then slowly reached out to grasp Jack's wrist and help pull him upright. Jack missed the theatrical grunting Stephen usually employed at such moments.

"I cannot discard this so easily," Stephen said. "I wasn't being fair to you, Jack. I thought that faced with the...realities, you would realise your error. I suppose I was demanding that you prove it."

"Was you though?" Jack considered. "Well, you're a deep old file and no mistake. But I know better than to try to prove anything to you, don't I? So don't you worry." He patted Stephen's arm and then left his hand there. 

Stephen's arm was tense, tightly coiled; he looked searchingly into Jack's face. But gradually, he let out a long, long breath, and eased beneath the touch.

And at last, blinking and bemused, Stephen let himself be towed along through the huge room back toward the bed. Jack drowsily enjoyed the feeling of Stephen leaning on him...Stephen usually would, as long as no great mention was made of it, and that suited Jack to the ground. He didn't want to make any great mention of anything. All he wanted was to slip into that great big bed, with Stephen in arm's reach, and rest.

Which is just what he did. And sometime in the middle of the night, he became aware that he had been snoring, and Stephen was rolling him onto his side with a matter-of-fact touch.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"Go to sleep, joy," whispered Stephen, sounding pleasantly sleepy himself. He settled onto Jack's pillow, and Jack's last awareness was of warm, easy breath stirring his hair.

* * *

The fresh summer morning woke Jack by degrees, with birds and breeze and light. He lay long just watching Stephen, who sat frowzy at the table, the nightshirt's fine sleeves shoved up to his elbows like any other garment, writing in the little book he habitually packed in his bag.

Jack could perhaps have lain there forever, but for his stomach suddenly waking to growl like a ravening beast, and the discreet tap of Henri at the door. 

A hasty wash and brush-up, fresh suits of less-elaborate clothes, and they were ready at the table just as the last of the fine breakfast was brought and spread before them. Chops, eggs, a landsman's rich (and weevilless) version of burgoo, a great dish of bacon, a rack of toast, a jar of marmalade the size of his fist. And most crucially, most splendidly, a great steaming pot of strong coffee.

Jack had just taken his first sip when another, brisker tap on the door heralded the entrance of La Mothe. He came into the room like the sunlight and the birds, smiling, his silk banyan and slippers a wash of colour. 

A warm bow and handclasp for Jack, three kisses for Stephen; this time Jack was not at all troubled to see those gentle embraces. He filled La Mothe's cup and made sure his plate was heaped, then set to himself.

The conversation was pleasant and undemanding, which he appreciated. Gossip about the party, with Jack informed about this person and that as the tales required; discussions of La Mothe's next concert, with Jack's musical opinions solicited; a few minor medical discussions, including the question of Henri's recovering wrist. 

And with the arrival of the next pot of coffee, Jack's eyes clear and his head fully awake, he noticed how La Mothe glowed, especially at Stephen. Not like a man in love—this was something quite different. Jack considered, and drank his coffee, and considered further.

Yes, it dawned on him now: it was triumph, sweet and smug. And now that he knew that, he could watch its effects on Stephen, who occasionally pressed his lips thin with asperity or cast a sidelong glance at La Mothe entirely unrelated to the topics at hand. _Your soul to the devil_ , Jack knew he was saying in his heart, as he did to Jack when Jack had won a victory and was reveling in it.

Jack grinned into his cup, but his camouflage must have been lacking, for soon he was receiving those glances as well. Poor Stephen, like a cat who had fallen backward off a shelf and now wished only to groom itself back into dignity.

Henri appeared at last, not with more coffee, but with word that the official carriage had arrived. Two manservants glided out with the repacked bags. Stephen stepped aside with Henri for a moment, and they spoke together over his wrist in Stephen's practised hands.

"Well," Jack sighed, rising. "It has been a pleasure, sir. But off I go, back where I belong."

La Mothe studied him, his head on one side. Being the target of those eyes would never feel quite routine. "Where you both belong," he said at last. "Yes?"

Jack began to make some reply or other, to temporise—he remembered too well his thoughts during the concert, the sacrifices Stephen made—but stopped at the lift of one slender hand.

"But I am right," said La Mothe with gentle, aristocratic arrogance. "Trust in that. Trust in him."

"I do," Jack said at once, without thought. It never needed any thought. "Of course I do." 

La Mothe looked so sleek and self-satisfied at that that Jack could have laughed. But it would be a joyful laugh, as it was a kindly self-satisfaction. Soon he would be dozing in the carriage with Stephen across from him reading a book; they would be together, back in _Surprise_ , with work and battle and music, the same life and a new one.

La Mothe stepped forward and embraced him for the first time, a light warm kiss to each cheek, and let him go.

"You are ready?"

"Yes," said Jack. "Oh, yes."

  


**Author's Note:**

> Profound thanks to mary crawford for beta, and mollyamory for timely assistance in a story conundrum! Title cribbed from Arthur Rimbaud.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21887410) by [Luzula (Luzula_podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula_podfic/pseuds/Luzula)




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